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“Project Censored continues to be an invaluable resource in exposing and highlighting shocking stories that are routinely minimized or ignored by the corporate media. The vital nature of this work is underscored by this year’s NSA leaks. The world needs more brave whistle blowers and independent journalists in the service of reclaiming democracy and challenging the abuse of power. Project Censored stands out for its commitment to such work.”
—Deepa Kumar, author of Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire and associate professor of Media Studies and Middle Eastern Studies at Rutgers University

“Censored 2014 is a clarion call for truth telling. Not only does this volume highlight fearless speech in fateful times, it connect the dots between the key issues we face, lauds our whistleblowers and amplifies their voices, and shines light in the dark places of our government that most need exposure.”
–Daniel Ellsberg, The Pentagon Papers

“In another home run for Project Censored, Censored 2013 shows how the American public has been bamboozled, snookered, and dumbed down by the corporate media. It is chock-full of ‘ah-ha’ moments where we understand just how we’ve been fleeced by banksters, stripped of our civil liberties, and blindly led down a path of never-ending war.”
–Medea Benjamin, author of Drone Warfare, cofounder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK.

“Project Censored shines a spotlight on news that an informed public must have . . . a vital contribution to our democratic process.”
—Rhoda H. Karpatkin, president, Consumer’s Union

“Those who read and support Project Censored are in the know.”
—Cynthia McKinney

“Project Censored brings to light some of the most important stories of the year that you never saw or heard about. This is your chance to find out what got buried.”
–Diane Ravitch, author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System.

“At a time when the need for independent journalism and for media outlets unaffiliated with and untainted by the government and corporate sponsors is greater than ever, Project Censored has created a context for reporting the complete truths in all matters that matter. . . . It is therefore left to us to find sources for information we can trust. . . . It is in this task that we are fortunate to have an ally like Project Cen-sored.”
—Dahr Jamail

“Project Censored interrogates the present in the same way that Oliver Stone and I tried to interrogate the past in our Untold History of the United States. It not only shines a penetrating light on the American Empire and all its deadly, destructive, and deceitful actions, it does so at a time when the Obama administration is mounting a fierce effort to silence truth-tellers and whistleblowers. Project Censored provides the kind of fearless and honest journalism we so desperately need in these dangerous times.”
—Peter Kuznick, professor of history, American University, and coauthor, with Oliver Stone, of The Untold History of the United States

“Activist groups like Project Censored . . . are helping to build the media democracy movement. We have to challenge the powers that be and rebuild media from the bottom up.”
—Amy Goodman

“For ages, I’ve dreamed of a United States where Project Censored isn’t necessary, where these crucial stories and defining issues are on the front page of the New York Times, the cover of Time, and in heavy rotation on CNN. That world still doesn’t exist, but we always have Project Censored’s yearly book to pull together the most important things the corporate media ignored, missed, or botched.”
–Russ Kick, author of You Are Being Lied To, Everything You Know Is Wrong, and the New York Times bestselling series The Graphic Canon.

“Hot news, cold truths, utterly uncensored.”
—Greg Palast

“[Censored] should be affixed to the bulletin boards in every newsroom in America. And, perhaps read aloud to a few publishers and television executives.”
—Ralph Nader

“The staff of Project Censored presents their annual compilation of the previous year’s 25 stories most overlooked by the mainstream media along with essays about censorship and its consequences. The stories include an 813% rise in hate and anti-government groups since 2008, human rights violations by the US Border Patrol, and Israeli doctors injecting Ethiopian immigrants with birth control without their consent. Other stories focus on the environment, like the effects of fracking and Monsantos GMO seeds. The writers point out misinformation and outright deception in the media, including CNN relegating factual accounts to the “opinion” section and the whitewashing of Margaret Thatcher’s career following her death in 2013, unlike Hugo Chavez, who was routinely disparaged in the coverage following his death. One essay deals with the proliferation of “Junk Food News,” in which “CNN and Fox News devoted more time to ‘Gangnam Style’ than the renewal of Uganda’s ‘Kill the Gays’ law.” Another explains common media manipulation tactics and outlines practices to becoming a more engaged, free-thinking news consumer or even citizen journalist. Rob Williams remarks on Hollywood’s “deep and abiding role as a popular propaganda provider” via Argo and Zero Dark Thirty. An expose on working conditions in Chinese Apple factories is brutal yet essential reading. This book is evident of Project Censored’s profoundly important work in educating readers on current events and the skills needed to be a critical thinker.”
-Publisher’s Weekly said about Censored 2014 (Oct.)

“One of the most significant media research projects in the country.”
—I. F. Stone

“Most journalists in the United States believe the press here is free. That grand illusion only helps obscure the fact that, by and large, the US corporate press does not report what’s really going on, while tuning out, or laughing off, all those who try to do just that. Americans–now more than ever–need those outlets that do labor to report some truth. Project Censored is not just among the bravest, smartest, and most rigorous of those outlets, but the only one that’s wholly focused on those stories that the corporate press ignores, downplays, and/or distorts. This latest book is therefore a must read for anyone who cares about this country, its tottering economy, and–most important– what’s now left of its democracy.”
–Mark Crispin Miller, author, professor of media ecology, New York University.

“Project Censored is one of the organizations that we should listen to, to be assured that our newspapers and our broadcasting outlets are practicing thorough and ethical journalism.”
—Walter Cronkite

The Release of Censored 2012 in September Celebrates 35 Years of Project Censored

July 3, 2011

In the last 35 years, the so-called mainstream media have been co-opted into a propaganda machine for the transnational corporate power structure, which serves a US/NATO Military Industrial Media Empire instead of We the People.

Project Censored resists the goals of global empire at the expense of human rights, we resist top down managed news in favor of a truly free press, and we resist censorship in all its guises.

Media Democracy in Action is our belief and we will firmly continue to build media from the bottom up by supporting independent news sources and validating content with our expanding number of affiliate colleges and universities worldwide. Functioning democracies are the result of an informed and participatory public and we need an informed electorate now more than ever to protect our civil liberties, our economy, and our Constitution.

Please Support this effort by making an Anniversary Gift to Project Censored. Gifts of $35 or more will be shown our gratitude with a copy of Censored 2012 upon release in September, with an introduction by former director Dr. Peter Phillips, and signed to you personally by current Project Censored director Mickey Huff.

For Censored 2012, we continue to divide our annual publication into three sections as we broaden, grow, and diversify efforts to illuminate examples of censorship in the corporate mainstream US press. Further, we continue to promote ways to improve our systems of reporting and communicating to the public at large about the most crucial issues we face as a society.

The first section of this year’s book, on the News that Didn’t Make the News and Why, houses the traditional top censored news stories from the past year, which are now analyzed in what we call Censored News Clusters. Within these Clusters, Project Censored’s team of media experts and their student interns analyze and connect the dots between stories based on similar themes or topics rather than simply list the top stories as ranked in importance by Project Censored judges. For the first time, we focus on the connections between censored stories as the structure of this chapter, flushing out why some topics are prone to such underreporting, and what we might do about this problem, rather than simply list and summarize top censored stories.

In the second chapter, Censored Déjà vu, we check for any new or increased coverage of previously underreported top stories. Most receive little if any coverage in the corporate mainstream press, but if they do, we monitor and remark upon it here, ever in hopes that the corporate media may be improved, but not waiting for such to take place as we advocate for the coming media revolution.

In chapter three, Adam Bessie joins the Project Censored director, Abby Martin of Media Roots and student interns to analyze the ubiquity of Junk Food News and the growing problem of News Abuse, including framing and propaganda in US media. This year we include a case study in how pubic workers (teachers especially) have been negatively portrayed in the corporate press as a major example of News Abuse.

Chapter four, with San Francisco State University professor of Holistic Studies Kenn Burrows, brings out the best in underreported news as we look at the positive, the signs of health and community building as published in the independent press, which the corporate media tend to deride, downplay, or outright ignore. The problems we face do not merely include the sordid things that are going on around us that the corporate media do not report, they also include the many positive things that are going on often right in front of us that the corporate media do not recognize, hence contributing to a sense of disconnection among many in society.

Chapter five brings back our media activism showcase which includes examples of media democracy in action, highlighting what other activists, scholars, and organizations are doing to achieve the media revolution, supporting the First Amendment, in maintenance of self governance and democracy. This year we welcome the Park Center for Independent Media, PR Watch, Media Alliance, Media Roots, Courage to Resist and more.

Section two focuses on what we call the Truth Emergency. This Truth Emergency we face is a result of the lack of factual reporting by the so-called mainstream media over the past decade. Americans are subjected to mass amounts of propaganda, from misinformation to disinformation, on a daily basis about some of the most significant issues of the day. Whether this involves the post-9/11 wars in the Middle East, the health care debate, election fraud or economic collapse, most Americans are unaware of all the facts of how we got where we now are as a society. It is the duty of the constitutionally protected free press to report factually to the public on these matters. However, as our work shows dating back to 1976, that is not happening. One way of combating this Truth Emergency is by understanding the nature of propaganda. This year, our Truth Emergency section is a primer on Propaganda Studies, which includes a brief history, theory, application, and case studies all presented to enhance media literacy among the general public. We are pleased to bring some of the best and brightest in the field to offer insight on this ever-important area of study. Randal Marlin gives a brief history of propaganda; Jacob Van Vleet looks at one of the key theorists of propaganda, Jacques Ellul. Robert Abele offer a philosophical and structural analysis of propaganda for readers while Elliot D. Cohen and Anthony DiMaggio look at specific areas, like the importance of Net Neutrality and astroturf activism in the so-called Tea Party, where understanding communication politics and media literacy really matter if a society is to be truly democratically functional, able to operate outside the propaganda matrix of the corporate media and establishment public relations machine.

The final section of the book is Project Censored International, which is a collection of various studies and media commentary that not only look at problems of global media censorship, but also examine how these important issues are handled, or ignored here in the US corporate press. This section brings us a diverse group of scholars and activists, including Cynthia Boaz, Ann Garrison, Jon Elmer with Nora Barrows-Friedman, Robin Andersen, Margaret Flowers, and Ina May Gaskin. The significant issues in this section include the Fair Sharing of the Common Heritage, introduced by Mary Lia, on moving toward an embrace of the human commons; understanding non-violence and how media depict such movements for peace and social justice; and the deconstruction of various myths– from the incredibly biased reporting on Africa to distorted views of recent disaster coverage, plus the ongoing skewed coverage concerning Israel/Palestine. This section continues on issues of health with an analysis of the top down denial of mass public support for single payer healthcare, and we round out Censored 2012 by looking at how corporate media distort life itself, from birth, by examining how corporate media have either ignored or demonized the efficacy of natural childbirth and midwifery in the US, despite that the facts surrounding homebirth culture clearly refute the mainstream coverage.

All in all, this is a work in progress and it involves hundreds of dedicated scholars, and students at over two dozen college and universities all over the world. These are people from all walks of life across the globe who have at least one thing in common: the belief in democracy and the role a free press plays in creation, protection, and maintenance of it. Thanks to all who made this work possible, to all the tireless and selfless contributors, to all the readers and supporters of a free and vibrant people’s press, one that is always and only uncensored.